Method To The Madness

Vasu Reddy from Chicago
vasureddy@aol.com

As bad as the reputation of political leaders is today, there is some history to where the current crop of politicians in power have been up to and why many of them are in jail. When Nehru was the leader and followed by Lal Bahadur Shastri for a short stint as the Prime Ministers of India, there was no need for them to raise money for canvassing around the country, and be in front of the media 24/7. The leadership of the country relied on principals of democratic India and only had to express their desire to have India continue to be democratic and remove poverty.

Even when Indira Gandhi became prime minister after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the big slogan was Garibi Hatao and removing poverty was the main slogan that people heard on the radio, prior to the days of the advent of television. There was never scandal related to the politicians and squandering national wealth in form of kickbacks. Only when the television and communications have been introduced into the country the money matters have become a staple of the societal owes in India.

To a large degree when BJP first came into power after the emergency rule declared by Mrs. Gandhi, the money matters were still bare budgeted campaigns and did not foster massive kickbacks. Politicians campaigned hard and visited all their constituents and power packed speeches which were long in rhetoric to huge audiences and promised to deliver to the poor almost in every speech. They were all predictable and spoke the language of the central politicians, and people were divided according to their party lines and voting and campaigns were all predictable.

Only when mobile communications and television were introduced across the country and with multiple licensees in the market big money being demanded and changing hands has become a common practice between the politicians and the business aspirants. Somewhere in the time the technology being introduced and common man having the ability to reach out to each other, the greed factor of politicians in demanding massive kickbacks has come into being a common practice. Instead of using the communications to promote the agendas of the political parties the politicians have been blatantly demanding and receiving massive amounts of money to line their pockets.

Tracing the money is fairly simple, and there is no need to expound on the intricacies of how the money is given, taken and sent to international destinations or into massive public investments. Every industry has been subjected to massive demands for money, and this directly impacts the national wealth system. It drives the price of licenses to levels that are impossible to sustain until the people of subjected to the massive greed factor of the politician in charge of making the decision. Real estate, communications, technology and whatsoever is involved with the markets and infrastructure automatically have to add the value of the kickbacks paid in building the networks and infrastructure and automatically adding to the cost of the end user. Every action taken to give out the country’s resources should have been done with obtaining the maximum value for the citizens of the country, but the reverse is being done while lining the pockets of the politicians. The old political slogan of Garibi Hatao would have been absolutely true if the resources were sold at market prices and the money used to meet the needs of the common man. India would not only be the largest democracy on earth, but also the wealthiest democracy on earth. Jai Hind.